KosovaNetwork

The Rule of the Gun - Law and order have abandoned Albania. Nowhere is safe from banditry fuelled by hundreds of thousands of illegal weapons. Report by Martin Adler, 1997. Ordinary people have resurrected an ancient Albanian text, the 'Book of Lek', a powerful creed of vengeance. Skander Lilaj is searching for his missing brother kidnapped from a cafe in Vlore. He finds a hidden badly mutilated body, but as he tries to report the crime the choas at the police station leaves us in no doubt that if Skander and his family are to get justice, they are going to have to get it for themselves. The family mourn at the graveside. They share their grief and frustration at the impotence of the police. But if they avenge the killing themselves they may start a blood fued that will echo through the generations to come.

This film provides recent footage of the Kosovo region juxtaposed with archive footage of the conflict. It also features interviews with families that were left scarred by the war.

25/03/1998 Albanian villages under siege. Albanian refugees. Refugees escaping. Destroyed and deserted Albanian villages. Boy says he was taken hostage by Serbs. Great seq of Albanian boy crawling through bushes and looking at Serbs camped around village who are clearly visible.

This feature examines the deep rift between Macedonia's Slavic population and its large ethnic Albanian minority. In some villages ethnic Albanians live as second class citizens, lacking basic rights. A decade after the fall of Yoguslavia, they feel let down by the government. "Our aim is not to use force against civilians - be they Serbs or Albanians. Our aim is the rights of Albanians in Macedonia", says a UCK fighter. Meanwhile, some Macedonians protest that "we all have a hard life"...

Kosovo's Clock Runs Down (1998) In 1998, the massacres by Serbs of at Drenica prompted a surge in the level of violence in the Albanian struggle. Support is growing for violent Albanian struggle, in the light of the massacre at Drenica. There the Serbs massacred 41 ethnic Albanians, claiming they were searching for members of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The village was tear-gassed, the houses shelled to pieces. The survivors deny that there were any gunmen in the compound. The village is only 500m from a Serb police base, an unlikely place to set up a guerrilla camp. Now 60 refugees spend each night in the schoolhouse, as Serb choppers circle overhead. It was meant as a warning to the Albanians against armed resistance to Serb rule. In fact it’s had the opposite effect, galvanising the Albanians behind a direct challenge to Serb domination. Adem Demaci, the ‘Nelson Mandela of Kosovo’, who spent 28 years in prison campaigning for Albanian independence, says Albanian violence is in self defence. A diplomatic solution seems impossible with even the moderate Albanian leadership insisting on independence in Kosovo, an outcome that the Serbs and the international community show no sign of accepting.